Ralif Redhammer
Legend
Witch World was the first time Andre Norton really clicked for me. It's a great series.
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What are you reading in 2024?
- Thread starter Nellisir
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Witch World was the first time Andre Norton really clicked for me. It's a great series.
Thomas Shey
Legend
Its decent, but I always thought the trilogy that starts three books down there (Three Against the Witch World, Warlock of the Witch World and Sorceress of the Witchworld) were superior; in a real sense they're what actually convinced me fantasy (rather than SF) was worthwhile.
Eyes of Nine
Everything's Fine
Asimov was adept at taking other genres and wrapping them in Sci Fi - and not suck
Clint_L
Legend
I'm currently reading The Three Body Problem and...I do not understand the acclaim for this book.
The writing is terrible! Maybe it's a bad translation, but even setting that aside the characters are paper thin and the dialogue is excruciating. Real people don't talk like that! Everyone talks like they are giving a painfully mendacious speech. And character motivations don't make any sense.
Also, I've read lots of gorgeous Chinese literature in translation. So I don't think we can just blame the translator.
I'll give it props for having an original take on aliens, though I am highly doubtful that anything remotely like their star system could ever produce sophisticated life, or any life, let alone an advanced civilization. For allegedly "hard" sci-fi (DUBIOUS!), there are an incredible number of logical leaps in this novel.
I liked it best when it focuses on exploring the pressure of doing science during the Cultural Revolution. That aspect of the book is interesting, and in that context it makes sense when everyone talks as if they are giving a speech. But that gets tired very quickly in other contexts.
Oh, and once again we get the theme that environmentalists are the real villains. And the "video game" used to further their agenda is utterly nonsensical.
I dunno - Cultural Revolution episodes aside, I think it's basically awful. I'm soldiering through to the end out of a sense of duty and because it's short. But it won the Hugo. I don't get it. At all.
Eh, scratch that last point. It's a Hugo award. But it was also nominated for a Nebula, which I find inexplicable!
The writing is terrible! Maybe it's a bad translation, but even setting that aside the characters are paper thin and the dialogue is excruciating. Real people don't talk like that! Everyone talks like they are giving a painfully mendacious speech. And character motivations don't make any sense.
Also, I've read lots of gorgeous Chinese literature in translation. So I don't think we can just blame the translator.
I'll give it props for having an original take on aliens, though I am highly doubtful that anything remotely like their star system could ever produce sophisticated life, or any life, let alone an advanced civilization. For allegedly "hard" sci-fi (DUBIOUS!), there are an incredible number of logical leaps in this novel.
I liked it best when it focuses on exploring the pressure of doing science during the Cultural Revolution. That aspect of the book is interesting, and in that context it makes sense when everyone talks as if they are giving a speech. But that gets tired very quickly in other contexts.
Oh, and once again we get the theme that environmentalists are the real villains. And the "video game" used to further their agenda is utterly nonsensical.
I dunno - Cultural Revolution episodes aside, I think it's basically awful. I'm soldiering through to the end out of a sense of duty and because it's short. But it won the Hugo. I don't get it. At all.
Eh, scratch that last point. It's a Hugo award. But it was also nominated for a Nebula, which I find inexplicable!
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Alzrius
The EN World kitten
I just finished reading The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, which is exactly what it sounds like: an official graphic novel adaptation of The 9/11 Commission Report.
This was another item that's been on my shelves for years (around fifteen, I want to say), having been gifted to me back when I read a lot more comics than I do now. I got around halfway through it before putting it down, so with my recent push to complete things which I've left unfinished, it seemed appropriate to polish it off now.
While I haven't read the full report, it's self-evident that there's less information here than you'll find there; even if a picture is worth a thousand words, you can't squeeze over five hundred pages of text into a hundred and thirty-five pages of mostly illustrations without a considerable amount of detail being lost. Even so, this is a decent overview of 9/11 in terms of what happened, how it happened, how it was possible, and recommendations for what should be done going forward. If the size of the full report seems too intimidating, this is a good alternative.
As a note in that regard, I recall hearing (around when this came out) that the entire reason an official graphic novel version was greenlit was because the 9/11 Commission wanted as many Americans as possible to be exposed to their findings, which is notable in that I'm not aware of any other such Congressional findings being adapted into another medium. I'll also note (simply because this is the only other thing I can recall about this) that there was a quote (which I can't source now) from the artist, saying that he couldn't bring himself to illustrate people jumping from the World Trade Center (which I can sympathize with).
This was another item that's been on my shelves for years (around fifteen, I want to say), having been gifted to me back when I read a lot more comics than I do now. I got around halfway through it before putting it down, so with my recent push to complete things which I've left unfinished, it seemed appropriate to polish it off now.
While I haven't read the full report, it's self-evident that there's less information here than you'll find there; even if a picture is worth a thousand words, you can't squeeze over five hundred pages of text into a hundred and thirty-five pages of mostly illustrations without a considerable amount of detail being lost. Even so, this is a decent overview of 9/11 in terms of what happened, how it happened, how it was possible, and recommendations for what should be done going forward. If the size of the full report seems too intimidating, this is a good alternative.
As a note in that regard, I recall hearing (around when this came out) that the entire reason an official graphic novel version was greenlit was because the 9/11 Commission wanted as many Americans as possible to be exposed to their findings, which is notable in that I'm not aware of any other such Congressional findings being adapted into another medium. I'll also note (simply because this is the only other thing I can recall about this) that there was a quote (which I can't source now) from the artist, saying that he couldn't bring himself to illustrate people jumping from the World Trade Center (which I can sympathize with).
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Eyes of Nine
Everything's Fine
Agree with this, 100%
Ralif Redhammer
Legend
I finished Effinger's When Gravity Fails. What struck me was how diverse it was, especially for the 80s. It's also easy to see the influence it had on R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk.
Now I'm reading the Nyborg/ De Camp/ Howard conglomeration Conan The Avenger.
Now I'm reading the Nyborg/ De Camp/ Howard conglomeration Conan The Avenger.
Ryujin
Legend
Ralif Redhammer
Legend
Like I said, pretty easy to see its influence!
If that's your copy, I am jealous. Aside from PDFs through DriveThru, it's completely out-of-print.
Ryujin
Legend
Yup, that's my original copy. I even had a copy of the R. Talsorian Games "Dream Park" RPG, with most of the adventures, until I shipped it off to a friend in the Tacoma area.
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